


With Justice and Temperance

by Arilsama



Series: Not a Hero (but i will live anyway) [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Death, Fantastic Racism, Gaslighting, Gen, MacGyver-ism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Warfare, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 23:04:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13223100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arilsama/pseuds/Arilsama
Summary: (I'll see you dead)Aedan Cousland survives the betrayal of Howe and the subsequent deaths of his entire family.Howe has forgotten, however, that this is his castle. His home terrority. He'll not go easy.-Aedan will die before he allows the betrayers to hold Highever.





	With Justice and Temperance

  It's been three days. Three days since Highever fell, since mother and father died. Three days without help.

  No one is coming.

  Over the last three days, he's been through hell, staying clear of Howe's ever searching forces often by the edge of his fingers. He was fine with that, when he thought help was coming.

  It is clear that has been a delusion.

  Little Howe, Thomas, is here alone. Howe had left, slipped out like the rat he is, leaving his forty guards here under the command of his greasy son. He's too young for the role, too aware of that too. He enforces his role through force. Even the bastards under Howe's command find him sadistic.

  Good. He'll need all the help he can get.

  Thing is that Howe may have been his father's best friend, the betraying bastard, but father wasn't an idiot.

  Howe knows nothing of the secrets of Highever, the passageways, the rooms that are just a bit too small on the inside, the doorways in the back of ancient wardrobes. William Cousland was a suspicious type, after all.

  Aedan knows all of these passageways.

  He can get around the castle without being seen, if careful, without being heard. He could even leave the castle, though he won't leave it in the hands of the enemy. It's an advantage that he desperately needs, and one that will win him this little war.

  This is a war of attrition, of moral, the sort that Couslands excel at.

* * *

  He starts small. All things start small, and he needs to test the little Howe. See how he reacts to the little, to build up the big.

  He starts with the water pressure.

  Castle Highever draws its water from the sea itself, a few runes specially ordered from the local Circle of Magi removing the salt and impurities. The water has run uninterrupted since the time of his great-grandfather, when it last needed a change. That makes it doubly convenient.

  It takes only a small pile of rocks, that look almost as if the tides themselves had been gradually adding them, for the water to go from gushing to an ever slowing stream to mere drops.

  He starts with the stream. No one reports it to little Howe, though there are grumblings by the guard and the few Elven cleaners they've managed to recruit. No one wants to risk his rage, and he's a greasy little brat. It takes two days of ever slowing water before he deigns to take a bath and swiftly throws a tantrum.

  He has to vanish at that point, too many eyes suddenly looking, but he still hears the annoyance of the forces. Oh, yes. Convenient.

* * *

  It takes them a whole two days to discover the rocks at fault, and they only do so by going around the outside of the castle. The salt, apparently, will not leave their clothes.

* * *

  This draws his curiosity to cleaners. The conveniently completely incompetent cleaners, and it swiftly become clear that they are not, as they play, incompetent. They're rebels.

  The elves like their life at Highever. None of the nobles have ever tried to enforce the inhumane laws of other cities. The Alienage is maintained. It's clear that they still hate and distrust them, but they prefer us to little Howe, who lets his guard run wild among them. Several elves have been forced to flush pregnancies from their womb, and they grow agitated. But Elves are cleverer than men, something that Aedan had never thought of, and have decided to make friends with their enemy to more easily stab them. The war of a thousand cuts.

  Aedan leaves a pile of gold and a letter. A test.

* * *

  Lice spreads like wildfire among the men and fleas among the hounds. At some point, the two intersect. Little Howe grows twitchy, as the rumors begin to grow.

  Unfortunately, Howe had been forced to use to communal showers, his bathtub cracked under mysterious circumstances, and that just happened to line up with the beginning of the lice invasion.

  Excellent work.

* * *

  Six guards disappear in the night. Little Howe writes his father and receives no reply. Unknown to him, the bird and message both rest in the sea, shot out of the sky with a misguided arrow.

  In a fit of temper, he orders that all the guards be shaved and himself undergoes the shame. He wears a hat fit for an Orlesian court, and the stink lessens. A bit. The women within the guard, a small unit hardened to the views of their employer, revolt against the concept. Little Howe orders them imprisoned and loses four guardswomen and two to guard them.

* * *

  Winter creeps in and worsens the mood of the guard. A fire starts in the kitchen, so they must depend on outside sources. Aedan must rely on the slyness of the maids, and he doesn't push them. He eats maybe once a day and the hunger plagues him.

  Winter, however, comes with opportunity. Sure, the lice and fleas are gone, killed by the oppressive cold, and by now, the guards have adapted to the swift showers and lack of water. He has potions now. Smuggled from the cleaners once he'd gained their trust, he uses the seemingly harmless: a fire resist potion. Fire resistance potions work on all forms of head, and anyone who's used them knows that they remove the ability to feel any heat. The effect is also seemingly equivalent to the symptoms of frostbite, and no one but a mage could diagnose the difference.

  Next on his list is stealing. He'd not thought of this one himself, in fact the cleaners had been doing it, in a mild form, for a while. Moving things, small things, a jacket suddenly moving across the room, a bed just a few inches off, and his addition: officer items appearing in their subordinate's storage and should that work, Little Howe's precious items, primarily more and more alcohol since he'd arrived here, ending up in the officer's storage.

  Comrade snaps on comrade, friendships grow tense and snap, accusations are everywhere. Little Howe grows ever more cruel, shaking now in addition to his compulsive scratching.

  They decide to execute thieves three weeks into this treatment, once the dungeon guard starts outnumbering the guard. Once it threatens the Howe brats safety, some whisper bitterly. First on their list are the women, who have by this point, become entirely disillusioned with Howe. He knows he should probably intercede on their behalf, knows that Aedan of Before would have. He also knows that executing women will be an excellent black mark on Little Howe.

  Only one escapes.

  The executions that follow bring their numbers down to twenty-six, and finally, he acts.

* * *

 

  It starts small. All his plans have.

  A few fall ill at first, fevers that Little Howe tells them to get over. They still do patrols. Then, progressively, swiftly, the rest become ill. They blame the food, then they blame the elves, then they wonder if it's the Maker punishing them. All but five die, Little Howe writes a letter to his father that meets the fate of all his letters. It's a goodbye.

* * *

 

  It takes no effort to capture the castle guarded by the dead and the almost dead. Aedan is welcomed, and though it is bittersweet, his entire family is dead and gone after all, he rouses their spirits. The elves, for once, are not the subject of hatred and fear but of wonder for their heroics. He ensures that, for he would be dead without them. Little Howe is dying anyway, so Aedan encourages him to write a letter. A letter detailing his father's crimes and his own. In return, he dies mercifully quick.

  He knows of Loghain's regency by a letter sent from Arl Eamon requesting aid, and considers. Castle Cousland needs him here, but there are other ways of sending aid. The elves have whispered of Red Jenny. Power over tyranny, and he believes. After all, he retook a castle through stealth, not the 'noble' charge he was taught by his parents to respect.

  The letter ends up in the right hands, to be used to the most effect, and money given to sponsor their activities for the promise that Arl Howe will meet a bloody end.

* * *

  Months later, after the story of the cornered dog has become legend, a party approaches Highever. When he sees Fergus, alive but a bit skinny, he cries for the first time. It takes him a while to stop.

"You did them proud, pup." Fergus says, and he can finally believe it.


End file.
